Namlo Completes Khamdenu School!

The furniture is in, windows are installed, and paint finally dry. Namlo Nepal has completed another major construction project with the four-room school building at Khamdenu. This project was funded by the CL Werner Foundation, Marty Clark and the Three Graces Foundation for a total of $37,000 and started at the end of August of 2013. The purpose of the project was to replace the old, dilapidated school building that was cracked, unsafe, leaking and well past its sell-by date, and create an environment that was more conducive to education.

Old School Building

The community raised over $3,000 in cash, $8,698 in in-kind donations and labor, with 43 families coming together as leaders of their community to help coordinate and direct the project, ultimately committing 6,600 hours of their own time to see the project to its completion. The school committee also generated over $900 to use as a maintenance fund for future repairs. The project employed forty-one people, seven of of whom learned new skills in construction.

New Khamdenu Building

The school building will accommodate 200 students, and the school is now seeking to become a higher secondary school. The Headmaster, Mr. Bal Bahadur Thapa, remarked , “Finally, with the help from Namlo we successfully constructed a FOUR ROOM, two-story school building. In this regard, lots of thanks to Namlo from my deep heart. We still need to improve at school in many aspects. We need to improve the skill and knowledge of teachers, need more teachers and need to construct another four-room school building.

Khamdenu teachers with Namlo community worker Kanchi Sherpa

“We have also planned to upgrade our school from lower secondary level to secondary level by 2016. By understating the poor socio-economic condition of school, sometimes we do get scared if we won’t able to run the secondary level. But still we do have hope and belief that WE CAN DO IT. Our honesty, unity and hard work may lead us our goal”.